The Social Fund has issued more than 1.4 million decisions on the assignment of pensions to citizens in the new constituent entities, announced Sergey Chirkov, Chairman of the Fund. This figure includes both transfers from pensions under regional regulations of the four constituent entities and pensions initially assigned under Russian legislation.
"Virtually all incoming applications from residents regarding pension assignments have already been processed and decisions made. The main outcome of this large-scale effort by the Fund is that more than 1.4 million pensioners in the new regions are now receiving Russian pensions, which are on average 40% higher than what they received previously," said Sergey Chirkov.
To simplify and accelerate the transition to federal payments, the Social Fund proactively processed them last year whenever possible, simplifying all procedures as much as possible. "If a person had already reached retirement age and was eligible for a Russian pension upon receiving Russian citizenship, our specialists accepted the application for recalculation under a simplified procedure," explained the Chairman of the Social Fund. "People did not need to apply separately for this service. Through this method, the Fund assigned 221,700 pensions in the new regions."
At the end of last year, the authority to pay pensions under regional legislation in the four new regions was transferred to the Social Fund. These payments continue to be received by individuals who have not yet reached retirement age or have not obtained a Russian passport. Their number amounts to approximately 200,000 people.
Overall, the Social Fund's branches carried out extensive and complex work last year to assign pensions in the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, noted Sergey Chirkov. The Fund dispatched specialists from other regions to assist the new territories.
"We helped as a united country. Since August 2022, nearly 500 missions have been organized to provide methodological, technical, and consultative support to colleagues. In total, the Fund sent more than 3,000 specialists to the regions. Two of our colleagues who went to assist in the Kherson region were killed under shellfire while performing their duties," said the head of the Social Fund.